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weed whacker

As you can see, I hunted up a few more things to put on the shelf, and hung up my ATCs (Artist’s Trading Cards) on a cord tied to the edge of the shelf with some tiny clothes pins. I think it is a perfect way to display them.

I haven’t made any ATC cards in quite a while, perhaps not since we moved here from Florida. My crazy quilting group, Florida Seaside Stitchers, had an ATC swap, which is where I got most of these. Then later, I swapped with some of my Seaside Piecemaker friends and through a yahoo group just for ATC swaps. Some of my cards on display came from as far away as New Zealand and Australia.

This side view shows how the cord is tied to eye screws attached to the edge. It also shows how the curtain rod just sticks through one of the curlicues of the shelf bracket. Very simple.

Weed Whacker

This is a little quilt I put together from my bottomless supply of novelty print strips. It is a Bonnie Hunter design. Now I have to get around to quilting it. It is going to Ronald McDonald house via Chattanooga Quilting Guild.

Remember Me

“Remember Me” is all together now. I spent the last couple days getting the final border on. The pattern called for the border being all the same color of red, but I didn’t have a red that I liked enough to use that way. Instead, I used some of all the fabrics in the applique to make a scrappy border. It was not as complicated as I had expected, and I am very happy with it. Now it will sit in the quilting pile with all its sister quilts waiting to be quilted. Once completely finished, this quilt will hang on a wall in the house here somewhere. It hasn’t told me yet which wall. My friend, Sharon gave me the pattern and we have been working on it together, doing a block a month. Hers is nearing completion too. I can’t wait to see them together.

That’s about it for now. I have been knitting on the same pair of socks all summer. Hopefully, I will have them finished soon.

Oh and last Saturday I went to a cuddle quilt workshop with Choo Choo Guild. If you click on their blog link, you can see pictures. We had a lot of fun and got a lot of quilts put together.

I turned in a charity quilt yesterday at the Crazy Quilters Guild meeting. We make quilts for a couple different groups. Each member is requested to make a couple kid sized quilts a year for Project Linus. I have had this one in the works for a while now, and all it needed was quilted and a binding. Happily, I managed to get it done in time for guild. I love this pattern which is by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.com She comes up with the most interesting ways to use up scrap fabrics. I have a lot more of these strips cut — probably enough to make 4 or 5 more little quilts once I get back to them. This pattern has a lot of movement with the spinning effect of the pinwheels, and I like the illusion that the scrappy bits are suspended on top of the background.

I forgot to measure this. I guestimate that it is about 38″ by 56″. I also turned in two neonatal quilts that were about the size of a fat quarter. I forgot to take a picture of them though.

IF you click on weed wacker in the categories area, you should find pictures of my pink weed wacker too. It is probably twin sized and is waiting to be quilted.

Well, it has been a while since my last post. I have gotten a few things finished and a few further along, but haven’t gotten around to letting you know. I will try to get everything in one post, but it may be long.

Weed Whacker

Here is the weed whacker quilt assembled with its border:

I have the backing and batting folded up with the top and they are just awaiting quilting. I hope to have this ready by the first Wednesday in November so that I can turn it in as my second quilt for Project Linus. That will complete the Crazy Quilter’s president’s challenge for this year.

Affair of the Heart

I don’t think I have mentioned this before, so it will seem like a new project. I have had the book, Affair of the Heart by Aie Rossmann since before I left Florida. I saw her and her quilt on Simply Quilts and really loved her designs and bought the book as soon as I found it. Recently, it has been on my mind and I decided to work on it a little at a time. Here is a picture of her quilt from the book:

Isn’t that gorgeous!

Aie’s quilt has 36 – 6″ or 7″ blocks composed of hearts and lotus flowers on a black background with a pretty heart border. The bright colors seem to glow against the black background. Making all 36 blocks seems a little daunting to me. I studied the blocks and sorted them according to how many pieces in each block, then I decided to make some of the blocks double size and chose the ones with the higher piece count. The larger blocks will be arranged at the corners and center of a nine patch arrangement. The four side sections will be made up of four regular sized blocks each. I think that will look nice for a wall hanging. I don’t know what to do about a border yet, but there is plenty of time to figure that out.

So far, I have three of the large blocks done. They are about 16″ square. I actually pieced the first one early this spring, and worked on it now and again. Once it was finished and hanging on the design wall, I felt more energized about the next blocks and picked up the pace a bit. Here are the ones I have so far:

This is block #22 and it has the most pieces at 40. All of the blocks also have embroidery — gold hearts and curly cues that really make the applique pop. I won’t do the embroidery till after the quilting, but I think I will use gold beads instead of floss. Here is a picture of this same block from the book showing the embroidery:

Wouldn’t that look great with beadwork?

Here is the second block I have finished and the original block from the book:

It is block 3 in the book and has 39 pieces.

I just finished the third block, which is block #27 and has 33 pieces. The embroidery will really enhance the applique. Here is mine and the one from the book:

Socks:

Here is my fourth pair of socks that I have knit. I am using the same pattern that I learned in the class, and really enjoy making them. I just hope I can bring myself to wear them when the weather gets cooler.

I started another pair using a skein of worsted weight yarn that I happened to have, just to see how they would come out. Because the stitches are bigger and fewer, the first sock worked up really fast. I think I spent a couple hours for three days and had the first sock done. Here is a picture of it:

for this sock, I continued the ribbing on the top of the sock from the cuff to the toe. The yarn is very soft and snuggly and would be great for around the house. I made a big mistake on this one though. I was so excited to have it finished, that I hurried and wove in the ends at the toe and the beginning, then snipped off the extra yarn so I could try the sock on. It fits perfectly, but when I took it off I found a big hole in the cuff:

Isn’t that terrible! I realized that when I snipped the extra yarn I must have also snipped one of the stitches and when I pulled the sock on it started to run. I am hoping I can mend it, but so far have not tried. I started another pair of socks with regular sock yarn while I am deciding what to do with this one. I don’t have pictures of the new pair yet.

Block of the Month:

Here is my latest block for the Crazy Quilter’s block of the month. It is either September or October. It was a little tricky, but I am happy with the result.

This is a cuddle quilt for the Choo Choo Quilters. I brought home the kit from the cuddle quilt workshop in September and got the blocks put together, added the border, quilted and bound the quilt. It was fun. I brought home three other cuddle quilts – two just needed the binding and the fourth needs quilted. I hope to get it done this week.

Ok, that is enough for one post. I have a couple more things, but will wait and put them in the next post.

Both of the guilds that I belong to have community service projects to make quilts for children. You may recall the yellow quilt that starred in a recent post. Well, I am working on another charity quilt and if it turns out OK, I have enough pieces already cut to make several.

Way before we even moved from Florida, I had cut up just about all my novelty fabric into 9″x2″strips and sewed them all together in pair with the intention of making them into weed wacker quilts. The Weed Wacker quilt is a wonderful scrappy design by Bonnie Hunter at quiltville.com. She has quite a few interesting quilt designs for scrap quilts and I really like the weed wacker. Some time ago, I put one together in scrappy pinks that you can see if you click on the weed wacker category and go to that post. Anyway, I pre-pared the strips to save packing space when we moved.

Because a lot of the fabrics were blue I thought yellow would be good for the accent color and as it happened I had a hunk of a yellow gold that I had gotten to audition but didn’t use for the pineapples in the Girl Gang quilt. I calculated that I would have enough for this project, but of course ended up going to the store and getting a couple more yards. Here is what I have so far:

Once the sections are sewn together, they will have a kind of pinwheel look to them. I must admit that I am not loving this yellow with the other fabrics yet, but hoping that once they are together that quilt magic will happen and surprise me as it so often does. I sure hope so, because I have a lot of these pairs of strips already sewn together and they are fun to sew. I put them on the wall so that I can move them around until they look more balanced. I love all these novelty fabrics and mixing them together like “I spy” quilts.

I have borders on now. I think that hot pink really sets off the rest of the pinks. I don’t like the way the corners look though, so I will probably replace them with all white squares. After that, I may add a two or three inch border of white and then quilt it and bind it with white. I may skip the white border because I think it is big enough – depends on how long it takes me to find some more white that matches.

Just a quick entry. The weed whacker blocks are all sewn together and one side of the saw-tooth border is on. I love it. Raymond is not so sure yet, but I think he will like it once all the borders are on.

Update on the kitchen items (placemats, napkins, pot holders etc.: I am disappointed even further with the pot holders. The first time I washed them, a small bit of fabric just disintigrated. That is sad since this was fancy schmancy gradation fabric. Another negative: I used a potholder to take a dish out of the oven at 475 degrees, and almost got burnt — the heat went right through two layers of cotton batting, a layer of insulbrite and the silver ironing board stuff as well as the cotton outside fabric. Lower heat seems to be ok though.

I made a nice little valance out of some of the gradation fabric. It looks great on the kitchen window. I am hoping to find a ready made curtain to go with it because the afternoon sun comes in just when we sit down to dinner. I took one picture, but the light wasn’t right.

I have also been making progress on the embellishment on Jenny’s wedding dress. Pictures to follow eventually.

Finally, I took a tarot card test and this is my card:

You are The Wheel of Fortune

Good fortune and happiness but sometimes a species of
intoxication with success

The Wheel of Fortune is all about big things, luck, change, fortune. Almost always good fortune. You are lucky in all things that you do and happy with the things that come to you. Be careful that success does not go to your head however. Sometimes luck can change.